We all think that everyone else has it better right up until you get an up front and close up view of that person’s actual life. In reality, their life just seemed better to you, because you are viewing from a distance that allows the grass and everything else to be much greener than it actually is.
We also fail to factor in how much effort someone might put into their proverbial grass. How much time they spend watering it, fertilizing it, cutting it, aerating it. How much of their life do they spend tending to the care and maintenance of that particular grass you are so envious of?
Also, another thing we fail to consider: how much time the person gets to spend actually enjoying their own grass. If they are like most people, they spend this inordinate amount of time doing all this care and then fail to appreciate just how lovely their grass is because they see someone else whose grass is greener or more lush or larger, or whatever. It just all seems so easy when in reality, you know from the maintenance of your own grass, there is actually quite a bit of work involved and the time it takes is pretty amazing, not in the good amazing way.
Of course I am talking about life...not grass.
Living in the world today where we are all our own PR reps, using the social media megaphones to exclaim, extoll and emphasize our grass. When in reality, everyone’s grass has brown spots, has that patch that just won’t grow no matter what you do, has dog pee stains or has crabgrass. There is nothing we can do about it, grass much like life will never, ever be perfect.
We all have blemishes. It is how life and grass are supposed to be. Yet, we all (myself included) engage in this whole social media campaign on a daily basis to show the world (at least our little corner of it) just how very lush and green it in fact is.
But where life and grass depart ways is that grass doesn’t really care what it looks like...but we really do care what our lives look like. And we all engage in that compare and despair...even when we work hard not to. Sometimes I get online and I am just spontaneously joyful at all the good grass growing in my friends lives. But then there are other times where it seems that everyone has a life that is all working out. They have money and time and work and love and great kids and it all seems so effortless. I KNOW it isn’t because no one’s life or grass just exists without a great deal of effort. I also KNOW that if everyone I know and I were to gather all our problems and throw them in a pile, I would more than likely pull my problems back in a fucking hurry. So why does the appearance of greener grass get to me sometimes?
Because I am human. And it is so easy to write a script for others that is full of all the good stuff because we aren’t privy to the pain, the suffering, the anguish. All we see is the polished up version of their grassy life. It looks like perfection but we know intuitively that it is not...grass, and well life, is never without pain.
So I am doing my best to remember that there is no greener grass without the work. And because I will always see other’s lives at a distance, I will always have the mirage that their grass is greener...when their grass is just like mine: amazing somedays, requiring more work than I have to offer on any given day, maintenance is a pain in the ass, and sometimes, I am just not up for the work.
So there is no greener grass, just the appearance of it. And so like grass, there are no better lives, only the appearance of them. We all suffer. We all have pain. We all feel needy and less than and need a hug. And to believe that our grass, and our lives, is ours to love, to enjoy, to live and to manicure to our hearts’ content. And we get to admire all that amazingly better looking grass of our friends with the awe reserved only for those lawns, or lives, that are viewed at a distance where everything looks better than it truly is.
